User:Knickeditor/Knickerbocker Case

The Knickerbocker Case occurred at the City College of New York (CCNY) between 1945 and 1950. It began on April 9, 1945 when four members of the Department of Romance Languages—Elliott H. Pollinger, Ephraim Cross, Otto Müller, and Pedro Bach-y-Rita—sent a letter to the president of the college, accusing the department head, William E. Knickerbocker, of anti-Semitism. The letter contended that Dr. Knickerbocker had made anti-Semitic remarks and denied the Ward Medal for proficiency in French to a Jewish student, Morton Gurewitch, because he was Jewish. These events ultimately led to further investigations and hearings, as well as to a student strike that was closely followed by the New York media at the time. Assuming that the modern civil rights movement began in 1948 with President Truman’s Executive Order 9981 desegregating the military, this student strike can rightly be viewed as the first student strike of the modern civil rights era.

On December 16, 1946, the state Board of Higher Education unanimously adopted a report of a special committee that found the accusations against Dr. Knickerbocker “totally unsubstantiated.” In response, the American Jewish Congress and the CCNY’s Hillel Foundation, led by Rabbi Arthur Zuckerman, requested that the city council’s special committee on discrimination conduct its own investigation. In April 1947, CCNY administrators issued a report finding that a clerical error had led to Gurewitch’s denial of the Ward Medal. (Gurewitch was later issued a duplicate medal.)

Meanwhile, the city council’s special committee on discrimination undertook its own investigation, finding that Dr. Knickerbocker had made anti-Semitic jokes and treated Jewish students disdainfully. In June 1948, the committee recommended Dr. Knickerbocker’s forced retirement. It also suggested that Drs. Bach-y-Rita and Pollinger had faced retaliatory treatment since bringing their original accusations against Dr. Knickerbocker, noting that before its investigation, both professors were “continuously recommended for promotions” but had since been removed from the promotions list. It proposed restoring their names to the list of recommendations for promotion.

Although the City Counsel voted to accept the committee’s report, administrators at CCNY chose to delay Dr. Knickerbocker’s dismissal. Later, a faculty committee was appointed whose report exonerated Dr. Knickerbocker and which was adopted by a 46-9 vote of the faculty.

The American Jewish Congress conducted its own investigation and stated that Dr. Knickerbocker showed a “philosophy and program of anti-semitism.” In September 1948, twenty students walked out of Knickerbocker’s class, while Rabbi Arthur Zuckerman, director of the campus Hillel Foundation, attempted to negotiate with the school to allow students to transfer into other classes. Finally, in October 1948, 2,000 students held a fiery meeting and a “sit-down” to demand Knickerbocker’s removal. CCNY administrators suspended classes.

Student protests climaxed in April 1949 when the student council voted to hold a general student strike. On April 11, Students battled police in “near riot proportions” and sixteen students were arrested. It was estimated that 65 percent of students participated by staying away from classes. The student council of the business school voted to condemn the strike. Leroy Galperin, a member of the student council’s strike committee, was quoted in the New York Times, assuaging fears of communist involvement.

Many students viewed the April 11 protest as being against racism generally at CCNY. Only one year earlier, a faculty committee had found the professor in charge of the Army Hall dormitory, William E. Davis, guilty of segregating the dormitory during WWII. Mr. Davis was removed from his post as director of the dormitory, but retained his position as a tenured professor in the economics department. These events were fresh in the mind of many protestors at the general strike, who shouted “Jim Crow must go.”

After protests settled down, Drs. Bach-y-Rita and Pollinger appealed to the State Education Commissioner, Francis T. Spaulding, requesting that he order the Board of Higher Education to file formal charges against Dr. Knickerbocker. In February 1950, the Board of Higher Education—which had originally dismissed the complaint against Dr. Knickerbocker—declared that there was no reason to reopen the investigation. It also declined to address the restoration of Dr. Bach-y-Rita and Dr. Pollinger to the list of recommendations for promotion. Spaulding supported the Board.

Several days later, Dr. Knickerbocker announced that he would not stand as a candidate for the head of the romance Languages department, though he would continue as a professor.

A July 1950 report by the Associate Alumni of City College stated that “[i]t cannot be said with any degree of certainty that Prof. William E. Knickerbocker was anti-Semitic. By the same token, it likewise cannot be said with any degree of certainty that he was not.”  Regarding Mr. Davis, who had been found guilty of maintaining segregated dormitories in Army Hall, the alumni wrote that his actions were “ill-considered rather than motivated by racial bias,” although it approved of his removal as director of the dormitory by the president of the college.

CCNY alumni continued to commemorate the 1949 strike, which for many students marked the beginning of their political involvement in progressive causes and in civil rights.